Director/Musician Manish Khushalani joins DN with his music video for his new single Jhula. The video itself is a vibrant and dreamlike exploration of relationships in all their colours, from joyous times of celebration through to moments of shared darkness. Opting for a movement and dance-led approach, Khushalani uses choreography as a form of inner expression, conveying what can’t be said through words. What’s most impressive though is how Khushalani, who wrote, produced, directed and shot the video, managed to maintain such a grand scope to his vision. Despite wearing multiple creative hats, he didn’t compromise in any way and was able to achieve such bold and distinctive results. DN is delighted to Premiere Jhula online in conjunction with a conversation with Khushalani, where he deconstructs the video’s potent colour palette, the challenges of shooting the film and collaborating with performers, and the decision to shoot on a large format system.
I’d like to start by hearing about the genesis of Jhula as both a music video and a song. How did both these forms come to be?
The release of my new single and music video Jhula is personally a new chapter in my artistic journey as I’m trying to weave sonically and visually the forms of storytelling that I deeply love, as a musician and a filmmaker. The track is my interpretation of this age-old poetry that has traditionally been celebrated as a tabla and voice piece. I had been deeply interested in bringing tradition and innovation together, fusing my roots in Indian classical music with my love for electronica.
The film explores themes of trust, vulnerability and the delicate nature of relationships. I wanted to tell the story of connection, rise, fall, resurrection and celebration through touch, contact and movement. The act was brought to life by Khushi Maroo and Pooja Patel under the expertise of collaborator and Choreographer Somya Kautia.
I wanted to tell the story of connection, rise, fall, resurrection and celebration through touch, contact and movement.
How did you look to convey those themes and shape them into a narrative?
I wanted to open the film with two figures in their deep slumber draped by a dupatta embraced in eternity, finding consciousness on a gently swaying Jhula. They rekindle their connection through this meditative and explorational journey as time feels sped up but also stretched out, not conforming to the passage of time we’re familiar with. As they hold fort, they break into a rather playful choreography that gives us a peek into their relationship. Parallel to the graph of the song, the film transitions from the ethereal home to a mystical forest where they float, going back and forth between the two spaces, teasing between the states of consciousness.
Jhula is such a visual feast, with gorgeous colours and rich production design. Could you talk about the house you shot in, and what you and your team did to make it look so vibrant?
The world of the song Jhula required the canvas to be a traditional, ancestral, lost-in-time kind of space. We found a Parsi house in Mumbai that we worked on with the help of Production Designer Ankur Aserkar to bring out the textures, colours and aura that we wanted to create. For the first space, we layered the walls with chipped paints of pistachio green that had breaks and imperfections. For the other spaces, we designed wallpapers and patterns in the colours of our palette, along with a lot of vintage lamps to bring out the red and amber glow. My personal favourite part of the design was printing custom coloured vinyl stickers that we pasted on the windows that would create a wash of vibrant patterns of coloured light, traveling over the performers as our ‘sun’ would pass through it.
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They, along with the way you play with time, give the video such a dreamlike quality. How did you want to approach the structure and flow of the video?
To create the non-conforming passage of time, we had a couple of light gag setups. For the opening sequence I wanted a transition from the blue hour of dawn to a golden sunny afternoon within a time period of 15 seconds. The grip and electric department made a large tent outside the house to get complete studio control for the exposure inside. We resorted completely to LED units inside and outside the house, going through a DMX system to create this drastic change in ambience.
The nail on the coffin to sell this aesthetic was a large tungsten light that we had outside, that dims up and travels parallel to the windows on a 20ft track trolley. Being both the director and the cinematographer was challenging personally, having to focus on the performance and geek out on the technicality at the same time. We did a second light gag for the drop in the song where clean white light travels through the windows, sharply breaking the red ambience, pairing the light gag with an in-camera vertigo effect to enunciate the drop.
Could you talk about the execution of the exterior shots where your actors are floating? How was that achieved?
For the exterior sequence, I collaborated with Action Director Sunil Rodrigues and his associate Hannan Sheikh. The action team helped me break down the story into five parts technically; Levitating, falling, rotating, revolving and the ‘Snorricam’ POV effect. This was really helpful for scheduling, as we had custom rigs created for each part. I wanted a location with tall tree coverage so we have some visual character every time we look up, and also to have enough dapple so we could shoot throughout the day without much problems from the top sun. We found this space in Mumbai’s Sanjay Gandhi National Park.
Being both the director and the cinematographer was challenging personally, having to focus on the performance and geek out on the technicality at the same time.
For levitation, we brought in a 65ft industrial crane, to mount the custom rigs that would suspend the performers. To shoot it in a way where we could be as fluid in motion as the performers, we mounted the camera on a stabiliser, which itself was mounted on a 32ft Jib. I had the mimic control for the stabiliser attached to a tripod on the ground so I could operate the camera remotely with ease. This was an interesting experiment! The whole process took a lot from the Khushi and Pooja but we made it through thanks to their determination and Somya’s nurturing. In post production, the VFX team, Invimold Pictures cleaned up all the cables and for a few shots extended the canvas to get some scale.
From hearing you talk it’s clear that you wanted to create something really large in scope, cinematically speaking, what technical equipment did you use to pull off that vision?
I wanted to shoot on a large format system to capture the larger than life world that the song belonged to. I shot this on the Arri Alexa Mini LF along with Blackwing7 X-tuned Lenses for their film-like texture, but most importantly for the breakouts of their colourful lens-flares. Using these lenses was non-negotiable as I needed glass that is expressive, especially when trying to tell a story completely visually. The colours of the lens flares in the exterior sequences created a callback for the passing of colours in the opening sequence. This technical call was an essential one as an investment in the emotional quotient of the film.
Could you break down the use of colour for us?
Before entering production, I imagined the film traveling through these four palettes; Blue hour of dawn, Golden afternoon glow, Red feminine force, and Emerald ethereal exterior. These colours were treated with extreme care and precision by Colourist Vineesh Vijayan, of Studio Skewr. He auditioned several different looks for all the sequences and we played a game of permutation and combination to find the right space for the film that felt the most cohesive and coherent.
I wanted to shoot on a large format system to capture the larger than life world that the song belonged to.
How long has Jhula been a project in motion for you? You’ve been so involved in the making of it, wearing multiple creative hats, what have you found most challenging about being so integrated within the project?
All in all, it took three months to ideate, recruit the team, rehearse and lock choreography. It took one day of on-set art and lighting setup. We shot the film in two days: first day interior, second day exterior. And lastly, it took three months to finish the edit, VFX, colour grade and package the project. The most challenging part about the project was that it was completely independent and self-funded, without any backing from any label or studio. Working in the commercial film industry helped as a crutch to facilitate making this film, financially and also through the creative learning. Super grateful to the large crew of amazing people who made this possible!
What does the future of your filmmaking look like?
Currently, I’m splitting my time between shooting TV commercials in Mumbai and being back in the cave making new music and ideating concepts for what the next film might be. I’m also traveling to certain film festivals that are screening Jhula, taking it as an excuse to get out and breathe a little again.
